All you parents who strap your kids heads out of the cars for the sake of speed should take a look at the frame by frame of my kid hitting the barrier in the heavy honda b main. Now just imagine the same wreck with loose shoulder straps and my kids helmet hanging out of the car. I do not know how you guys sleep at night. USAC Step up and stop the leaning!!

All of us parents are all very concerned about our children. I don't think you should make a statement like this against the parents that choose to have their kids leaning out of the car. You like a seat that is fine, others perfer to have the driver leaning which is perfectly fine. I have seen more drivers complain of being hurt or actually get hurt that are sitting in a seat and not leaning out of the car.Lets make a deal and you run your car the way you think it should be and the others will run their car the way they perfer to run it. Stop trying to make more Rules when we can't even obey all of the rules that are in effect now.

The MotionX people have been doing a great job and I don't think this thread is the best place to discuss this, but.... Our kid does not "lean" any farther than the jersey bar. He refuses to, which is good, because I don't want him to. In Toledo his Hvy. WF flipped and because he is pretty much as wide as the car he got a seperated shoulder on impact. Had he been leaning out 350 lbs. would have landed squarely on his head and shoulder. Could have been really bad. As it was he only had to have his arm in a sling for a week and didn't miss any baseball. Last year I saw 3 kids knocked unconcious on contact. All hanging out from the shoulders up. I know of at least one case of severe whiplash this year. Could be a lot more. No one reports this stuff. It took about a dozen broken ankles to get the heel stop on board. If a QM win is worth risking serious harm to your kid, by all means, let them hang out. How much damage can a bumper do to a helmet after all.....

I'm sorry, but any crash that hurt a kid in a seat would have hurt the kid even more if he were leaning. A rule against leaning is something that USAC is going to have to put a lot of thought into because telling people not to lean is easy, but the boundaries and guidelines are going to have to be well thought out. I'd rather wait a little longer for it than to see something rushed out that doesn't work. The logistics of how some are going to accomplish that is a whole different story. I'm totally against leaning and when our driver is so big that he needs to lean to fit in the car, it's time to move up. Performance wise, there isn't a need to lean. Anyone who says otherwise needs to go buy a Steve Smith book on quarter midgets because optimum performance can be achieved without your child's armpit resting on the jersey bar.

Performance wise, there isn't a need to lean. Anyone who says otherwise needs to go buy a Steve Smith book on quarter midgets because optimum performance can be achieved without your child's armpit resting on the jersey bar.

Uhh.... that would be wrong. What "leaning" acomplishes is to move more weight down and to the left. That lets you move the lower center of gravity more closely to a lower rotational center giving the car less overturning momentum and greater side bite. Leaning will always be a performance advantage and dangerous.

WRONG! It may be easier for you to set your car up by having your kid lean, but you can do it without it. In every class that kids lean way out of the car, there are kids that win regularly that do not lean so drastically. If you can sleep easy at night knowing you put your kid in a more dangerous situation to make it easier on you setup wise, so be it.

For those of us concerned for other kids safety, USAC will address this issue in the future. I would bet any amount of money on it. Right now they need to focus on growing their track and member counts first. Doing it right now would cost them too many teams at a crucial point in their development. Once they have a strong hold on the market for .25 Midget racing, you will see a rule change to eliminate the leaning.

This isn't just a seat or no seat thing either. Look at the pictures from Junior Honda C Main. There is a kid with his Randy LaJoie seat mounted in such a way the head restraint is way outside of the shoulder bar. Hopefully the rollover that put his head on the pavement will convince his handler to move that seat over.

It is fact that a lower center of gravity will create lower roll center. However it is also fact that with enough time spent on setup a Quarter Midget can be made to be just as fast without having a driver lean outside the shoulder bar. This fact is proven weekly at many tracks.

On top of the safety issue, anyone with their kid leaning outside the car is teaching them bad habits that will not translate to any other form of racing after Quarter Midgets. Unless maybe I have always run to get a hot dog while guys were sitting on their nerf bars in Sprint car races or when Tony Stewart hangs out the window during the Daytona 500.

True, but there's some things we can do with our driver close to upright that didn't produce results with him leaned. Also, I don't know how true this is because we don't run one, but we have a member that swears the inboard LF eliminates the need to lean absurdly far.

I also agree with SFreitas. We're planning on moving up as a lot of people are and teaching a driver to drive from the side of the car doesn't help his transition to moving up.

Moving the left front shock, as well as the left rear, translates to more of the static weight being positioned left of the roll center buy moving the axles to the right. The only hang up is that stupid nerf bar tire inset rule. The roll center on a panhard bar car is always at the center of the panhard bar.Valentino Rossi?

I am not sure why you guys are so big on this subject. You put your child in as much danger driving down the road in car. There are many diffrent chassis to choose from and no one trys to get any chassis bared from QM racing, so why try to get the driving style choose of a driver and handler bared from QM racing? Concentrate on your own equipment and leave everyone else alone about theirs it is our choose on how we want to set up our equipment.

Last year all non down tube chassis or non molly tube chassis were barred from competition so, yes, some cars have been banned. My kids don't lean out the window in the car either but the dog does. Set up your stuff any way you want but don't expect sympathy if something bad happens.

"The only hang up is that stupid nerf bar tire inset rule." - Nothing a Saw's All and a welder won't fix. We made a new nerf bar for one of the Tampa kids in about an hour or so just a couple days before we all left for Indy.

"so why try to get the driving style choose of a driver and handler bared from QM racing?" - Because it isn't safe! You know what I find funny...I have only seen a few fires, but we make our kids wear firesuits and gloves. I have seen dozens of roll overs, but we still let our kids lean out of the car. Why don't we let them race in shorts and t-shirts?

"The only hang up is that stupid nerf bar tire inset rule." - Nothing a Saw's All and a welder won't fix. We made a new nerf bar for one of the Tampa kids in about an hour or so just a couple days before we all left for Indy.

Yeah, but it still has to be 4 in. out and the tire can't be inside it.Just in case someone thinks bad things never happen: